The essays contained in this volume are loosely bound by an
interest in identifying literary works in the Pentateuch
(Genesis-Deuteronomy) and the Former Prophets (Joshua-Kings). The
contributions are unified by little other than their adherence to a
model of composition that emphasizes the formative role played by
editors (or "redactors") in the composition process. The
redactor steps into the role of the author, adapting and reshaping the
earliest sources to the point that their origin is forever obscured. The
focus of this research is therefore on discerning the latest redactions
that shaped the Pentateuch and other literary productions. As noted by
the editors in their introductory remarks, this type of
historical-critical interpretation represents a marked shift from older
methods of interpretation such as source criticism and
tradition-historical criticism. The former focused on the source
documents J, E, and P within the literary context of the Hexateuch,
which offered a narrative of a land promised and finally attained by
conquest in the book of Joshua. Tradition history sought to demarcate
separate blocks of tradition, separating the books from Genesis through
Kings into a Tetrateuch (Genesis-Numbers) and the books from Deuteronomy
through Kings into a Deuteronomistic History (henceforth, DtrH).

While moving beyond the constraints of the traditional divisions
made by the source-critical and tradition-historical methods, most
modern redaction-critical scholarship has encountered new and perplexing
difficulties in locating the boundaries of the literary works in Genesis
through Kings. The eleven contributions to this volume, which are the
outcome of a two-year consultation between the Pentateuch Section and
the Deuteronomistic

History Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, represent an
attempt at a rapprochement. They seek to use the new presuppositions of
redaction criticism to examine anew the larger literary units in
Genesis-Kings, and to identify the compositional processes that gave us
these books as they exist today. The editors have organized the essays
into two categories. In the first category ("Methodological
Studies"), the four contributors tackle broad questions regarding
the appropriate methodology for isolating literary works in Genesis
through Kings. In the second category ("Case Studies"), the
seven essayists investigate specific texts in order to explore the
literary connections between the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets.

In the first of the four articles dealing with methodology, Konrad
Schmid describes Martin Noth' s pivotal role in understanding the
Tetrateuch/Pentateuch as a literary work distinct from the DtrH and
observes that the strict separation made by Noth between the two units
became the prevailing consensus of the late twentieth century.
Noth's primary arguments were twofold: 1) that the book of Joshua
shows no sign of the traditional sources J, E, and P, and 2) that the
Tetrateuch exhibits no indication of Deuteronomistic editing. Schmid
then casts a critical eye on what he argues was a scholarly compromise
between Martin Noth and Gerhard van Rad that led to the misguided
harmonization of the two theories of the DtrH (Noth) and the Hexateuch
(von Rad). These two theories have subsequently been shown not to work
well together, thanks in large part to the work of John Van Seters, Hans
Henrich Schmid, and Rudolf Rendtorff in the 1970s. Current research has
continued to indicate the unsustainability of the "gentlemen's
agreement" between Noth and von Rad.

Thomas Romer begins his essay by offering a comprehensive
examination of the major shifts that have taken place in the historical
and critical research into the Hebrew Bible in the past century or so,
and then turns to an examination of the major proposals for the
identification of the Hexateuch, the DtrH, and the Enneateuch. He notes
that the arguments for and against the existence of these literary units
are linked to specific models for the formation of the Hebrew Bible.
Romer's own model proposes the existence of a "Deuteronomistic
Library" in the Babylonian period, which included the scroll of
Deuteronomy, the scrolls of Joshua-Kings, as well as some prophetic
scrolls edited by the same Deuteronomistic group (such as Jeremiah and
Hosea). A separate "Priestly Library" contained scrolls that,
together with the scrolls from the Deuteronomistic Library, were later
used to form the Pentateuch and then the Prophets. According to Romer,
it was the so-called "Holiness School" that later removed the
scroll of Deuteronomy from the Deuteronomistic Library, and appended it
to an original Priestly document. With Deuteronomy as the new conclusion
to the Torah, the Holiness School now had an explanation for the
revelation at Sinai. Romer therefore sees the separation of Deuteronomy
from Joshua-Kings as the origin of the Pentateuch.

Like Schmid and Romer, Erhard Blum bluntly articulates the central
problem that is at the foundation of the disagreement among Hebrew Bible
scholars, i.e., the question over whether interpretations are dealing
with actual or imaginary literary works. In the first section of his
article, Blum attempts to address this problem by exploring the
"multivalent internal indicators" for connecting the books of
Genesis through Kings, while at the same time arguing for a break in the
canon between Deuteronomy and Joshua that dates back at least to the
Hellenistic period. According to Blum, "the simultaneity of
independence and continuity seems to be an essential structure of a
written canon, in which each instance of innercanonical intertextuality
also represents a kind of 'intratextuality' " (p. 47).
This insight does little to dispel the uncertainty surrounding the
identification of original literary works, however.

Neither does Blum's discussion of the methodological problem
that confronts the interpreter when faced with the variety of literary
relationships between the books, namely, the difficulty of
distinguishing limited additions to specific texts from larger-scale
redactional activity that is intended to create a literary work. To
illustrate the complexities that arise from the distinction between
intertextual references between independent books and intratextual
correlations suggestive of a more systematic redaction, Blum examines
the recent hypotheses offered by E. Aurelius and R. Kratz. He concludes
by offering his own proposals based on a third class of textual
indicator: "internal self-referential definitions of literary
units" (p. 58). The final pages of his article focus on how the
internal references to the "Torah" within the Pentateuch
function as indicators of a literary work.

David Carr takes a different tack in his discussion of the problem
of identifying literary works in the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets.
Steering clear of the internal textual analyses that characterize the
approach of Romer and Blum, Carr instead compares the overlapping
historical narratives in Samuel-Kings and Chronicles in the hopes that
this type of "empirical" analysis can shed light on the
relationship between the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets. Following
the empirical investigation of material shared and not shared by
Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, Carr arrives at the conclusion that the
Chronicler must have had a version of Samuel-Kings that was both shorter
and perhaps different from the version preserved in the extant
manuscript of Samuel-Kings in the MT. When comparing the shared material
in Chronicles and the DtrH with links to the Pentateuch, Carr finds
instances of Pentateuchal themes to be quite rare. This may attest to a
time when the tradition had not yet been coordinated with the Torah.
When he examines the material that is peculiar to Chronicles and the
DtrFl respectively, Carr finds numerous connections to the Pentateuch.
Fie argues that this state of affairs reflects a time in the redaction
of these two works when they underwent a process of expansion and
harmonization with the Torah. The differences between Chronicles and
Samuel-Kings may be indicative of the way that redactors bound the Torah
to the Former Prophets, and therefore can serve as an example of how
ancient traditions were expanded.

The "Case Studies" section begins with the article by
Suzanne Boorer, who focuses on the nature of the Priestly narrative
material, particularly as this relates to the question of whether the
basic P narrative extends beyond Genesis-Numbers into the book of
Joshua. She argues that the P-style texts in Joshua are not genuine
priestly material but were added by later redactors in an attempt to
create a Hexateuch. Christoph Levin is interested in determining how
early redactional versions of blocks of tradition might have been shaped
and expanded by the Enneateuch's division into nine scrolls.

Cynthia Edenburg revisits the Eden and Cain stories found in the
narrative of Genesis 2-4 with an eye towards investigating whether the
sin and exile paradigm might have played a role in the compositional
history of the Enneateuch. Michael Konkel investigates the innerbiblical
links between Exodus 32-34 and the rest of the Enneateuch in order to
determine whether the post-Priestly redactor of this passage was working
within the framework of an Enneateuch. Konkel concludes that this was
not the case, arguing that this late redaction of Exodus 32-34 was
establishing intertextual links with an independent DtrH, and that the
Pentateuch and the Former Prophets were originally two separate works.

Thomas Dozeman notes the important position of Joshua between the
Pentateuch and the Former Prophets, and reminds his readers that the
question of the compositional history of this book is complicated by the
fact that the MT and LXX canons preserve different versions. Dozeman
concludes that the editor(s) of Joshua in the emerging MT were operating
within the context of a Pentateuch, whereas the redactor(s) of the LXX
version were working within the literary horizon of something more like
the Enneateuch.

Christoph Berner compares the "parallel motifs and narrative
traits" found in the account of the exodus (Exodus 1-15) and in the
story of Solomon's forced labor and the subsequent revolt of
Jeroboam (I Kings 1-12), concluding that these two passages were not
composed within the context of an original literary Enneateuch. The text
in 1 Kings developed later and is dependent on the Exodus story, which
in turn suggests that the Enneateuch developed from the Pentateuch.

The focus of Felipe Wissmann's essay is the judgment texts in
the books of Kings--those speeches in which prophets, kings, or Yahweh
pass judgment on the actions of the ruler or the people. Wissmann
concludes that the redactor of Kings did not draw his judgment formulas
from the book of Deuteronomy but instead was influenced by the prophetic
texts. He goes on to suggest that Deuteronomy was not originally
connected to Kings and therefore rejects the hypothesis of a DtrH in
Deuteronomy-2 Kings. This proves, according to Wissmann, that the
division between the Torah and the Former Prophets was a very ancient
one.

On the subject of style, the density and at times
incomprehensibility of the English style of the articles in this volume
lessens the effectiveness of the authors' arguments. In terms of an
overarching narrative that might connect the disparate views represented
in this volume, unfortunately there is little that unites these
redaction-critical studies other than a desire to discern solid criteria
for identifying literary works in Genesis-2 Kings. Each of the scholars
arrives at the problem of identifying the fundamental literary units of
the Enneateuch with a certain set of presuppositions that colors his
interpretation of the textual data. Phrasing the title of the volume as
a question is certainly an appropriate decision on the part of the
editors, as the cumulative effect of the variety of approaches presented
in this volume is to leave the question of literary boundaries quite
open-ended.

The lack of a consensus in biblical scholarship is discouraging for
a researcher who hopes to see progress in identifying the primary
large-scale literary units of the Enneateuch. Nevertheless, the eleven
essays give the researcher a good sense of the manifold problems in
identifying literary units with which current specialists are grappling.

JESSICA WHISENANT

WASHINGTON. D.C.

COPYRIGHT 2015 American Oriental Society
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.